Part One Indirect Fire and the Need for a Forward Observer
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BRACKETING THE ENEMY: FORWARD OBSERVERS AND COMBINED ARMS EFFECTIVENESS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by John R. Walker August 2009 Dissertation written by John R. Walker B. S., University of Akron 1974 M. A., University of Akron 1991 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2009 Approved by Clarence E. Wunderlin ________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Kevin J. Adams______________________, Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Leonne M. Hudson___________________, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee John J. Gargan_______________________ Lesley J. Gordon_____________________ Accepted by Kenneth J. Bindas_____________________, Chair, Department of History Timothy Moerland_____________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank all who have helped and guided in so many different ways. Special thanks to my adviser, Dr. Clarence Wunderlin, Jr. of the Kent State University History Department, for helping me transform an idea into a cogent argument. Also my deepest thanks to my co-adviser, Dr. Kevin Adams whose own experience in the writing of military history proved to be invaluable. Thanks to Mr. Donald Singer and the staff in Modern Military Records, Textual Archives Service Division of the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland for the help I received while I was there. My deepest gratitude to Kathy Buker, Special Collections Librarian, and Ed Burgess, Director, of the Combined Arms Research Library, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This is a wonderful research facility with a staff dedicated to helping the public. Thanks to Dr. Boyd L. Dastrup, Command Historian, U. S. Field Artillery, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for his kind encouragement, suggestions, and counsel. I am also very grateful to Michelle Youngblood, former staff member of the Morris Swett Technical Library in the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, who was particularly helpful to me during my visit there. Thanks too, to Mr. Richard Baker and the staff at the U. S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania for their kind help during my visit to that facility. Thanks to Mr. Richard Diser, a Kent State University alumni, Vietnam veteran, and former artilleryman who read the earlier version of my paper and offered his advice. Thanks to my former classmates and co-employees at the University of Akron, Mr. Don iii Appleby and John Ball on the staff of the University‘s Bierce Library. Don and John went out of their way to help me obtain books through Ohio Link and Inter Library Loan and have been a source or encouragement and advice along the way. Finally, special thanks to my dear wife, Alice, for her encouragement, common sense advice, patience and forbearance. In much less time than it has taken me to complete this program, our three children have collectively earned four masters degrees and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. As Dad has continued to plod along, she has never given up on me along this extended academic odyssey. iv DEDICATION A battery of 105-mm howitzers near Kottenheide, Germany, close to the Czech border, May 1945. During World War II, the Army created the Combat Infantryman‘s Badge to create esprit de corps among infantrymen who served in battle. Forward observer teams served in the thick of battle but, as artillerymen, they were ineligible to receive the award. Thus, the Army never recognized forward observer personnel as combatants. Recently, the Army has created a new Combat Action Badge, similar to the CIB, to signify that the wearer has served in combat. While raising the morale of infantrymen was important during World War II, perhaps the real significance of the forward observers lies not in the fact they were active combatants, but that they provided the human element previously missing to provide close artillery support of infantry and in so doing achieved true combined arms effectiveness. This study is dedicated to all United States artillerymen, officers and enlisted men alike, who performed forward observer duties during the Second World War. CSMO. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………..iii DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………..v INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1 PART ONE: PREPARATION FOR COMBINED ARMS WARFARE 1. THE EVOLUTION OF FORWARD OBSERVATION……………………………..22 2. MOBILIZING FOR WAR: THE 37TH DIVISION AND 87TH DIVISIONS………..70 3. ASYMMETERY AND SYMMETRY: TWO DIFFERENT ENEMIES……………..82 PART TWO: ASYMMETRY IN THE PACIFIC 4. BAPTISM OF FIRE: THE 37TH DIVISION ON NEW GEORGIA………………...112 5. BOUGAINVILLE: MASSED FIRES AND MASSED SLAUGHTER……………..138 6. COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN THE PHILIPPINES: LUZON AND MANILA…....159 PART THREE: SYMMETRY IN EUROPE 7. INITIATION TO COMBAT: THE SAAR BASIN, DECEMBER 1944……………194 8. FORWARD OBSERVERS IN THE ARDENNES: THE BULGE………………….217 9. THROUGH THE WALL AND OVER THE RHINE……………………………….242 PART FOUR: THROUGH THREE WARS AND BEYOND 10. CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………… 278 11. EPILOGUE…………………………………………………………………………295 GLOSSARY……………………………………………………………………………317 BIBLIOGRAPHY .…………………………………………………………………….325 vi INTRODUCTION The inspiration to conduct a detailed study of forward observers first came to me in the spring of 1996, about six months after having met the late James R. McGhee of Mount Vernon, Illinois, at an annual reunion of the 87th Division Association. He had been a second lieutenant with A Battery, 334th Field Artillery Battalion in that division and had served as a forward observer. Jim and Gayle A. Bricker, Jr., of Sarver, Pennsylvania, and my father, Donald L. Walker of Alliance, Ohio, worked together as a three-man forward observer party during the early phases of the division‘s combat experience in late 1944 and early 1945. On February 12, 1945, Gayle Bricker left the unit and was evacuated to a field 1 hospital, suffering internal injuries from concussion. After the 87th Division breached the Siegfried Line in February, 1945, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Moran, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 345th Infantry Regiment awarded Combat Infantryman‘s Badges to two field artillerymen, Jim McGhee and my father. The awards were unofficial, yet, they represented one instance where an infantry officer recognized that artillery forward observers were in the war, too. Jim believed that the U.S. Army should have designated a similar badge for forward observer personnel, and was so proud of his CIB that he sewed it on his uniform before returning to the United States. Five decades later, he and a few other former ___________________________ 1. United State Army, Battery A, 334th Field Artillery Battalion, 87th Infantry Division, Morning Report,12 February, 1945. St. Louis, MO: National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records. 1 2 2 petition the Department of the Army to create such an award. Although this drive failed, Jim‘s unsuccessful efforts convinced me that few people know what is meant by the term ―forward observer,‖ and even fewer comprehend what a forward observer does. More importantly for the discipline of history, historians have failed to recognize that forward observers during World War II provided the human element previously missing to achieve the first consistently effective combination of two combat arms– infantry and field artillery–in the twentieth century. This is a study of combined arms doctrine as it evolved in that early part of that century; i.e., the combining of different combat arms on the battlefield so that firepower can support the manpower of 3 maneuvering infantry. Its focus is on the theory and the World War II practice of placing forward observer teams with frontline maneuvering infantry to control and adjust 4 supporting artillery fires. ___________________________ 2. General William C. Westmoreland, himself a former artilleryman, called this effort ―unsalable,‖ probably because it had been tried unsuccessfully before. Westmoreland to John R. Walker, May 8, 1996 (in author‘s files). 3. FM 3-0 Operations defines combined arms as the simultaneous application of two or more arms such as infantry and field artillery, to achieve an effect on the enemy that is greater than if individual combat arms were used in sequence. U.S. Department of the Army, FM 3-0 Operations (DRAG Edition) (Washington DC: Department of the Army, June 15, 2000) 4-27 as cited in John W. Washburn, ―Integration of Armored Forces in the U.S. Army Infantry Division‖ Fort Leavenworth, KS, Command and General Staff College, School of Advanced Military Studies Monograph, 2000),1; Jonathan M. House, the premier American authority on combined arms warfare indicates that ―combined arms tactics and operations are the actual roles performed and techniques applied by these different arms and weapons in supporting each other, once they have been organized into integrated teams. This is the area that is of most concern to professional soldiers, yet it is precisely this area where historical records and tactical manuals often neglect important details.‖ Jonathan M. House, Toward Combined Arms Warfare: A Survey of 20th- Century Tactics, Doctrine, and Organization, (Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Combat Studies Institute: Research Survey No. 2, 1984), 3. 4. Lieutenant Colonel James G. Snodgrass defined maneuver in the operational sense as ―the swift positioning of combat units to attack the enemy‘s rear, attack